CHAPTER II
AUNT JANE PROPOSES
Aunt Jane Hammond stalked into the meagerly furnished parlor, and lookedaround. It was the first time she had been to see the Bray girls sincetheir "come down" in the world.
She was a tall, gaunt woman--their mother's half-sister, and much olderthan Mrs. Bray would have been had she lived. Aunt Jane, indeed, hadbeen married herself when her father, Dr. "Polly" Phelps, had marriedhis second wife.
"I must--say I--expected to--see some--angels sit--ting a--round--whenI got up here," panted Aunt Jane, grimly, and dropping into the mostcomfortable chair. "Couldn't you have got a mite nearer heaven, if you'dtried, Lyddy Bray?"
"Ye-es," gasped Lyddy. "There's another story on top of this; but it'safire just now."
"_What?_" shrieked Aunt Jane.
"Do you really mean it, Lyddy?" cried her sister. "And that's what thesmoke means?"
"Well," declared their aunt, "them firemen will have to carry me out,then. I couldn't walk downstairs again right now, for no money!"
'Phemie ran to the hall door. But when she opened it a great blast ofchoking smoke drove in.
"Oh, oh!" she cried. "We can't escape by the stairway. What'll we do? What_shall_ we do?"
"There's the fire-escape," said Lyddy, trembling so that she couldscarcely stand.
"What?" cried Aunt Jane again. "_Me_ go down one o' them dinky littleladders--and me with a hole as big as a half-dollar in the back of mystockin'? I never knowed it till I got started from home; the seam justgave."
"I'd look nice going down that ladder. I guess not, says Con!" and sheshook her head so vigorously that all the little jet trimmings upon herbonnet danced and sparkled in the gaslight just as her beadlike, blackeyes snapped and danced.
"We--we're in danger, Lyddy!" cried 'Phemie, tremulously.
"Oh, the boy!" exclaimed Lyddy, and flew to the kitchen, just in time tosee the Smith family sliding down the plank into the laboratory--the twogirls ahead, then Mother Smith, then Johnny Smith, and then the father.And all while the boy next door held the plank firmly in place against thewindow-sill of the burning flat.
Lyddy threw up the window and screamed something to him as the last Smithpassed him and disappeared. She couldn't have told what she said, for thevery life of her; but the young man across the shaft knew what she meant.
He drew back the plank a little way, swung his weight upon the far endof it, and then let it drop until it was just above the level of her sill.
"Grab it and pull, Miss!" he called across the intervening space.
Lyddy obeyed. There was great confusion in the hall now, and overhead thefire roared loudly. The firemen were evidently pressing up the congestedstairway with a line or two of hose, and driving the frightened peopleback into their tenements. If the fire was confined to the upper floorof the double-decker there would be really little danger to those below.
But Lyddy was too frightened to realize this last fact. She planted theend of the plank upon her own sill and saw that it was secure. But itsloped upward more than a trifle. How would they ever be able to creep upthat inclined plane--and four flights from the bottom of the shaft?
But to her consternation, the young fellow across the way deliberatelystepped out upon the plank, sat down, and slid swiftly across to her.Lyddy sprang back with a cry, and he came in at the window and stoodbefore her.
"I don't believe you're in any danger, Miss," he said. "The firemen are onthe roof, and probably up through the halls, too. The fire has burned avent through the roof and----Yes! hear the water?"
She could plainly hear the swish of the streams from the hosepipes. Thenthe water thundered on the floor above their heads. Almost at once smallstreams began to pour through the ceiling.
"Oh, oh!" cried Lyddy. "Right on the supper table!"
A stream fell hissing on the stove. The big boy drew her swiftly out ofthe room into her father's bedroom.
"That ceiling will come down," he said, hastily. "I'm sorry--but if you'reinsured you'll be all right."
Lyddy at that moment remembered that she had never taken out insurance onthe poor sticks of furniture left from the wreck of their larger home.Yet, if everything was spoiled----
"What's the matter with him?" asked the young fellow, looking at the bedwhere Mr. Bray lay. He had wonderfully sharp eyes, it seemed.
"I don't know--I don't know," moaned Lyddy. "Do you think it is the smoke?He has been ill a long time--almost too sick to work----"
"Your father?"
"Yes, sir," said the girl.
"I'll get an ambulance, if you say so--and a doctor. Are you afraid tostay here now? Are you all alone but for him?"
"My sister--and my aunt," gasped Lyddy. "They're in the front room."
"Keep 'em there," said the young man. "Maybe they won't pour so much waterinto those front rooms. Look out for the ceilings. You might be hurt ifthey came down."
He found the key and unlocked and opened the door from the bedroom to thehall. The smoke cloud was much thinner. But a torrent of water was pouringdown the stairs, and the shouting and stamping of the firemen above werelouder.
Two black, serpent-like lines of hose encumbered the stairs.
"Take care of yourself," called the young man. "I'll be back in a jiffywith the doctor," and, bareheaded, and in shirt-sleeves as he was, hedashed down the dark and smoky stairway.
Lyddy bent over her father again; he was breathing more peacefully, itseemed. But when she spoke to him he did not answer.
'Phemie ran in, crying. "What is the matter with father?" she demanded,as she noted his strange silence. Then, without waiting for an answer, shesnapped:
"And Aunt Jane's got her head out of the window scolding at the firemenin the street because they do not come up and carry her downstairs again."
"Oh, the fire's nearly out, I guess," groaned Lyddy.
Then the girls clutched each other and were stricken speechless as a greatcrash sounded from the kitchen. As the young man from the laboratory hadprophesied, the ceiling had fallen.
"And I had the nicest biscuits for supper I ever made," moaned Lyddy."They were just as fluffy----"
"Oh, bother your biscuits!" snapped 'Phemie. "Have you had the doctor forfather?"
"I--I've sent for one," replied Lyddy, faintly, suddenlyconscience-stricken by the fact that she had accepted the assistance ofthe young stranger, to whom she had never been introduced! "Oh, dear! Ihope he comes soon."
"How long has he been this way, Lyd? Why didn't you send for me?" demandedthe younger sister, clasping her hands and leaning over the unconsciousman.
"Why, he came home from work just as usual. I--I didn't notice that he wasworse," replied the older girl, breathlessly. "He said he'd lie down----"
"You should have called the doctor then."
"Why, dear, I tell you he seemed just the same. He almost always lies downwhen he comes home now. You know that."
"Forgive me, Lyddy!" exclaimed 'Phemie, contritely. "Of course you arejust as careful of father as you can be. But--but it's so _awful_ to seehim lie like this."
"He fainted without my knowing a thing about it," moaned Lyddy.
"Oh! if it's only just a faint----"
"He couldn't even have heard the noise upstairs over the fire."
Just then a stream of water descended through the cracked bedroom ceiling,first upon the back of 'Phemie's neck, and then upon the drugget whichcovered the floor.
"Suppose _this_ ceiling falls, too?" wailed Lyddy, wringing her hands.
"I hope not! And we'll have to pay the doctor when he comes, Lyd. Haveyou got money enough in your purse?"
"I--I guess so."
"I'll not have any more after this week," broke out 'Phemie, suddenly."They told me to-day the rush for Easter would be over Saturday night andthey would have to let me go till next season. Isn't that mean?"
Lydia Bray had sat down upon the edge of their father's bed.
"I guess everything _has_ happened at once,"
she sighed. "I don't see whatwe shall do, 'Phemie."
There came a scream from Aunt Jane. She charged into the bedroom wildly,the back of her dress all wet and her bonnet dangling over one ear.
"Why, your parlor ceiling is just spouting water, girls!" she cried.
Then she turned to look closely at the man on the bed. "John Bray looksawful bad, Lyddy. What does the doctor say?"
Before her niece could reply there came a thundering knock at the halldoor.
"The doctor!" cried 'Phemie.
Lyddy feared it was the young stranger returning, and she could only gasp.What should she say to him if he came in? How introduce him to Aunt Jane?
But the latter lady took affairs into her own hands at this juncture andwent to the door. She unlocked and threw it open. Several helmets andglistening rubber coats appeared vaguely in the hall.
"Getting wet down here some; aren't you?" asked one of the firemen. "We'llspread some tarpaulins over your stuff. Fire's out--about."
"And the water's _in_," returned Aunt Jane, tartly. "Nice time to come andtry to save a body's furniture----"
"Get it out of the adjusters. They'll be around," said the fireman, witha grin.
"How much insurance have you, Lyddy?" demanded the aunt, when the firemen,after covering the already wet and bedraggled furniture, had clumpedout in their heavy boots.
"Not a penny, Aunt Jane!" cried her niece, wildly. "I never thought of it!"
"Ha! you're not so much like your mother, then, as I thought. _She_ wouldnever have overlooked such a detail."
"I know it! I know it!" moaned Lyddy.
"Now, you stop that, Aunt Jane!" exclaimed the bolder 'Phemie. "Don't youhound Lyd. She's done fine--of course she has! But anybody might forget athing like insurance."
"Humph!" grunted the old lady. Then she began again:
"And what's the matter with John?"
"It's the shop, Aunt," replied Lyddy. "He cannot stand the work anylonger. I wish he might never go back to that place again."
"And how are you going to live? What's 'Phemie getting a week?"
"Nothing--after this week," returned the younger girl, shortly. "I sha'n'thave any work, and I've only been earning six dollars."
"Humph!" observed Aunt Jane for a second time.
There came a light tap on the door. They could hear it, for the confusionand shouting in the house had abated. The fire scare was over; but thefloor above was gutted, and a good deal of damage by water had been doneon this floor.
It was a physician, bag in hand. 'Phemie let him in. Lyddy explained howher father had come home and lain down and she had found him, when thefire scare began, unconscious on the bed--just as he lay now.
A few questions explained to the physician the condition of Mr. Bray, andhis own observation revealed the condition of the tenement.
"He will be better off at the hospital. You are about wrecked here, I see.That young man who called me said he would ring up the City Hospital."
The girls were greatly troubled; but Aunt Jane was practical.
"Of course, that's the best place for him," she said. "Why! this flatisn't fit for a well person to stay in, let alone a sick man, until itis cleared up. I shall take you girls out with me to my boarding housefor the night. Then--we'll see."
The physician brought Mr. Bray to his senses; but the poor man knewnothing about the fire, and was too weak to object when they told himhe was to be removed to the hospital for a time.
The ambulance came and the young interne and the driver brought in thestretcher, covered Mr. Bray with a gray blanket, and took him away. Theinterne told the girls they could see their father in the morning andhe, too, said it was mainly exhaustion that had brought about the suddenattack.
Aunt Jane had been stalking about the sloppy flat--from the ruined kitchento the front window.
"Shut and lock that kitchen window, and lock the doors, and we'll go outand find a lodging," she said, briefly. "You girls can bring a bag forthe night. Mine's at the station hard by; I'm glad I didn't bring it uphere."
It was when Lyddy shut and locked the kitchen window that she rememberedthe young man again. The plank had been removed, the laboratory windowwas closed, and the place unlighted.
"I guess he has some of the instincts of a gentleman, after all," she toldherself. "He didn't come back to bother me after doing what he could tohelp."
Two hours later the Bray girls were seated in their aunt's comfortableroom at a boarding house on a much better block than the one on which thetenement stood. Aunt Jane had ordered up tea and toast, and was sippingthe one and nibbling the other contentedly before a grate fire.
"This is what I call comfort," declared the old lady, who still kept herbonnet on--nor would she remove it save to change it for a nightcap whenshe went to bed.
"This is what I call comfort. A pleasant room in a house where I have noresponsibilities, and enough noise outside to assure me that I am in alive town. My goodness me! when Hammond came along and wanted to marryme, and I knew I could leave Hillcrest and never have to go back----Well,I just about jumped down that man's throat I was so eager to say 'Yes!'Marry him? I'd ha' married a Choctaw Injun, if he'd promised to take meto the city."
"Why, Aunt Jane!" exclaimed Lyddy. "Hillcrest Farm is a beautiful place.Mother took us there once to see it. Don't you remember, 'Phemie? _She_loved it, too."
"And I wish she'd had it as a gift from the old doctor," grumbled AuntJane. "But it wasn't to be. It's never been anything but a nuisance tome, if I _was_ born there."
"Why, the view from the porch is the loveliest I ever saw," said Lyddy.
"And all that romantic pile of rocks at the back of the farm!" exclaimed'Phemie.
"Ha! what's a view?" demanded the old lady, in her brusk way. "Just dirtand water. And that's what they say _we're_ made of. I like to study humanbein's, I do; so I'd ruther have my view in town."
"But it's so pretty----"
"Fudge!" snapped Aunt Jane. "I've seen the time, when I was a growin' gal,and the old doctor was off to see patients, that I've stood on that sameporch at Hillcrest and just _cried_ for the sight of somethin' movin' onthe face of Natur' besides a cow.
"View, indeed!" she pursued, hotly. "If I've got to look at views, I wantplenty of 'life' in 'em; and I want the human figgers to be right up closein the foreground, too!"
'Phemie laughed. "And I think it would be just _blessed_ to get out ofthis noisy, dirty city, and live in a place like Hillcrest. Wouldn't youlike it, Lyd?"
"I'd love it!" declared her sister.
"Well, I declare!" exclaimed Aunt Jane, sitting bolt upright, and lookingactually startled. "Ain't that a way out, mebbe?"
"What do you mean, Aunt Jane?" asked Lydia, quickly.
"You know how I'm fixed, girls. Hammond left me just money enough so'tI can live as I like to live--and no more. The farm's never been aughtbut an expense to me. Cyrus Pritchett is supposed to farm a part of iton shares; but my share of the crops never pays more'n the taxes and therepairs to the roofs of the old buildings.
"It'd be a shelter to ye. The furniture stands jest as it did in the olddoctor's day. Ye could move right in--and I expect it would mean a leaseof life to your father.
"A second-hand man wouldn't give ye ten dollars for your stuff in thatflat. It's ruined. Ye couldn't live comfortable there any more. But ifye wanter go to Hillcrest I'm sure ye air more than welcome to the use ofthe place, and perhaps ye might git a bigger share of the crops out ofCyrus if ye was there, than I've been able to git.
"What d'you say, girls--what d'you say?"